The Ridiculous Ground-Up World Building Questionnaire
What follows is an exhaustive list of questions for world building. YOU should be able to answer all of these questions, and your readers should be able to answer a fair amount by the end of your story or series.
Generally for world building I recommend picking a modern-day country or region for actual geographical/climate world building, and an ancient empire or two to help you answer the other questions.
You may not need to answer all questions, I doubled many for urban vs rural settings and some questions are repeated in various sections. Also, the term “destitute” is used to mark the lowest levels of society (in some stories that can mean slaves or servants). Just FYI.
What follows is 1,045++ Questions, and I do recommend answering them for each country on your map (if they play a role in the story)…
(Sorry for anyone on mobile who isn’t seeing the ‘Keep Reading’ cut)